Weaver, Robert C. 1907–1997

Robert C. Weaver 1907–1997

Robert C. Weaver remains one of the least known of the civil rights pioneers who struggled throughout the middle half of the twentieth century to obtain rights for black Americans. Ebony magazine called him “one of the direct action pioneers” for picketing Washington, DC, stores as early as the 1930s. Primarily, however, his activities were within the context of his governmental jobs; he held various federal positions under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal administration in the 1930s and 1940s, and then again under the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson presidential administrations in the early 1960s. In 1961 he received the highest federal appointment then assigned to any African American when he became Administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Agency. Four years later, he became the first African American on the presidential cabinet, when President Johnson appointed him to the top position at the newly formed U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

While many have considered Weaver’s achievements to be exceptional, he never considered his actions extraordinary. He was raised in a middle-class family in Washington, DC, by parents who stressed education and achievement. “They worked [and] they struggled,” he told Ebony magazine, “and their one ambition was to send us to New England schools.” The family’s vision of success was rooted in its lineage. Weaver’s grandfather, Robert Tanner Freeman, was the first Black person to graduate from Harvard with a degree in dentistry. His parents realized their goal, for Weaver attended Harvard from 1925 until 1934, earning bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees in economics.

Weaver dedicated most of his life to fighting discrimination and improving race relations. He held a succession of assignments for a variety of departments under the New Deal administration of the 1930s and 1940s, frequently serving as advisor for minority affairs and race relations. He advised the Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes from 1934 to 1938; acted as special assistant to Nathan Straus of the Housing Authority from 1938 to 1940; assisted Sidney Hillman of the National Defense Advisory Commission in 1940; and was chief of the Negro employment and training branch of the labor division in the Office of Production Management from 1942 to 1943. After the United States joined World War II, he served on the War Manpower Commission as director of Negro Manpower Services.

Simeon Booker wrote in Ebony magazine, “[Weaver’s] race relations service was an innovation for government [at that time].” Not satisfied with fighting discrimination on the job, Weaver spent his free time fighting the battle, too; during his first year in government, he and some friends desegregated the employee cafeteria.

Throughout his life, Weaver felt the sting of discrimination personally. Shortly after he finished his work at Harvard, he was recommended for a position with the Federal Reserve Board in New York City. He did not get the job because of his race. Years later, when he

Born Robert Clifton Weaver on December 29, 1907, in Washington, DC; died on July 17,1997, in New York City; son of Mortimer Grover and Florence Freeman Weaver; married Ella V. Haith, 1935; children: Robert (deceased), Education:Harvard University, BA, 1929; Harvard University, MA, 1931; Harvard University, PhD, 1934.

became Housing and Home Finance Administrator, he had a problem with his own housing. After he and his wife moved into an apartment building on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, DC, both suffered cold shoulders from the tenants. “There was the coolness,” he told Ebony,“and [the] management wasn’t too happy with the integration idea.”

Weaver left Washington in the 1940s because he felt that the anti-discriminatory programs he had helped to put in place were moving too slowly. He served on the first Mayor’s race relation board in Chicago from 1944 to 1945, and then moved to New York, where he taught at Columbia University and New York University. From 1949 to 1954 he worked with the John Hay Whitney Foundation as director of Opportunity Fellowships, distributing money to fund projects that would not otherwise have received support; he distributed at least $600,000 to promising young African-American scholars. During the 1950s he served on various housing boards for the city and state of New York.

Weaver’s scholarly work during the 1940s and 1950s reflected his interest in the economics and housing problems of the African-American population. In 1946 he published Negro Labor: A National Problem, and two years later finished The Negro Ghetto, a book about housing segregation in the North.

Weaver’s scholarly and administrative work quietly attracted attention, and on December 31, 1960, President John F. Kennedy appointed him as the administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Agency, making him the first black to achieve such a high position in the federal government. His agency had an estimated annual budget of more than $300 million, and oversaw such subsidiary agencies as the Federal Housing Administration, Public Housing Administration, Community Facilities Administration, and the Urban Renewal Administration. In 1966, Ebony magazine reported, “How the…poker-faced scholar [Weaver] took over the…[Housing and Home Finance Agency] in 1961 and brought direction and morale to the sprawling agency is a sterling example of his ability. For the first time, administrators of five agencies in the network met, worked out common problems and developed programs. New projects were conceived, including moderate-income housing, rent supplement assistance for low income families, open space preservation, urban beautification, mass transit assistance, rehabilitation assistance, relocation aids, grants for basic public facilities, [and] advanced acquisition of sites and land development assistance.”

In 1961 President Kennedy attempted to raise Weaver’s agency to cabinet level but was blocked by Congress because of his plans to put Weaver, a black man, at the head. Four years later President Johnson succeeded, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development was established. On January 13, 1966, Weaver became the first African American appointed
to a cabinet position. As President Johnson made the appointment, he told the country, according to an Ebony account, that “Bob Weaver’s performance as administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Agency has been marked by the highest level of integrity and [an] ability to stimulate a genuine team spirit. I have found him to be a deep thinker but a quiet and articulate man of action. He is as well versed in the urban needs of America as any man I know.”

When the President Richard Nixon’s administration took over in 1968, Weaver left government for good, and returned to academe. He served as the President of Baruch College for two years and then became a Distinguished Professor at Hunter College until he retired in 1978. Even after his retirement, Weaver was famous for never wasting time and always working. Shortly after he joined the cabinet, in fact, an aide of his told Ebony that “Weaver never wastes time. He reads, writes, and constantly researches. When he makes a trip, he carries books and reports to read.”

In addition to both his academic and government work, Weaver kept busy on many boards and committees. He was on the board of directors of Metro Life Insurance Company, the Bowery Savings Bank, and Mount Sinai Hospital and Medical School; he served as president of the National Committee against Discrimination in Housing, as a member of the commission on law and social action of the American Jewish Congress, the Citizens Committee for Children, the New York Civil Liberties Union, and for many years was active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He kept busy until he no longer could. At age 89, Weaver died in New York City on July 17, 1997.

Despite his success and the praise of others, Weaver always refused to spread his own fame. “Bob believes in getting the work done, not publicity on what he plans to do,” Clarence Mitchell of the NAACP told Ebony magazine. Even when he was waiting to be nominated to the cabinet, he refused to ask black groups to recommend him or campaign in his behalf, knowing that his qualifications would secure him the position.

While he may never have blown his own horn, many others recognized Weaver’s worth and awarded him honors accordingly. In addition to the nearly 30 honorary degrees from such institutions as the University of Michigan, Howard, Harvard, Morehouse, Rutgers, Amherst, and Columbia, he received the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP in 1962, the Russworm Award in 1963, delivered the annual Godkin Lectures at Harvard in 1965, and received the Albert Einstein Commemorative Award in 1968. In 1992 the Congressional Black Caucus honored him at a special party during their annual Weekend Production.

The nation commemorated Weaver’s greatest legacy in 2000, when the HUD headquarters building in Washington, DC, was dedicated in his honor. Fittingly, Weaver’s name became the first of any African American to grace a cabinet building in the capitol. Harlem Representative Charles Rangel, who had introduced the bill honoring Weaver to Congress told Jet that “This is a long overdue expression of the nation’s gratitude for Robert Weaver’s contributions.” The HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo praised Weaver in Jet, saying that he “put the bricks and mortar on President Johnson’s blueprint for a Great Society. Robert Weaver got real urban legislation on the books and nurtured our country’s first commitment to improve the quality of life in our nation’s cities. All of us who work at HUD and all who believe we can build an even greater society, are forever in his debt.” Indeed many of the “bricks and mortar” Weaver put in place continue to benefit the nation.

Weaver, Robert C. 1907–

Robert C. Weaver 1907–

Robert C. Weaver is one of the least known of the civil rights pioneers who struggled throughout the middle half of the twentieth century to obtain rights for black Americans. Ebony magazine called him “one of the direct action pioneers” for picketing Washington, D.C. stores as early as the 1930s. Primarily, however, his activities have been within the context of his governmental jobs; he held various federal positions under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal administration in the 1930s and 1940s, and then again under the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson presidential administrations in the early 1960s. In 1961 he received the highest federal appointment then assigned to any African American when he became Administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Agency. Four years later, he became the first African American on the Presidential Cabinet, when he led the newly formed U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

While many have considered Weaver’s achievements to be exceptional, he has never seen himself that way. He was raised in a middle-class family in Washington, D.C, by parents who stressed education and achievement. “They worked [and] they struggled,” he told Ebony magazine, “and their one ambition was to send us to New England schools.” His parents realized this goal, for Robert attended Harvard from 1925 until 1934, earning bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees in economics.

Weaver has dedicated most of his life to fighting discrimination and improving race relations. He held a succession of assignments for a variety of departments under the New Deal administration of the 1930s and 1940s, frequently serving as advisor for minority affairs and race relations. He advised the Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes from 1934 to 1938; acted as special assistant to Nathan Straus of the Housing Authority from 1938 to 1940; assisted Sidney Hillman of the National Defense Advisory Commission in 1940; and was chief of the Negro employment and training branch of the labor division in the Office of Production Management from 1942 to 1943. After the United States joined World War II, he served on the War Manpower Commission as director of Negro Manpower Services.

Simeon Booker wrote in Ebony magazine, “[Weaver’s] race relations service was an innovation for government [at that time].” Not satisfied with fighting discrimination on the job, Weaver spent his free time fighting the battle, too; during his first year in government, he and some friends desegregated

Throughout his life, Weaver has personally felt the sting of discrimination. Shortly after he finished his work at Harvard, he was recommended for a position with the Federal Reserve Board in New York City. He did not get the job because of his race. Years later, when he became Housing and Home Finance Administrator, he had a problem with his own housing. After he and his wife moved into an apartment building on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, D.C., both suffered cold shoulders from the tenants. “There was the coolness,” he told Ebony;,“and [the] management wasn’t too happy with the integration idea.”

Weaver left Washington in the 1940s because he felt that the anti-discriminatory programs he had helped to put in place were moving too slowly. He served on the first Mayor’s race relation board in Chicago from 1944 to 1945, and then moved to New York, where he taught at Columbia University and New York University. From 1949 to 1954 he worked with the John Hay Whitney Foundation as director of Opportunity Fellowships, distributing money to fund projects that would not otherwise have received support; he distributed at least $600,000 to promising young African American scholars. During the 1950s he served on various housing boards for the city and state of New York.

Weaver’s scholarly work during the 1940s and 1950s reflected his interest in the economics and housing problems of the African-American population. In 1946 he published Negro Labor: A National Problem, and two years later finished The Negro Ghetto, a book about housing segregation in the North.

Weaver’s scholarly and administrative work quietly attracted attention, and on December 31, 1960, President John F. Kennedy appointed him as the administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Agency, making him the first black to achieve such a high position in the federal government. His agency had an estimated annual budget of more than $300 million, and oversaw such subsidiary agencies as the Federal Housing Administration, Public Housing Administration, Community Facilities Administration, and the Urban Renewal Administration.

In 1966, Ebony magazine reported, “How the … poker-faced scholar [Weaver] took over the… [Housing and Home Finance Agency] in 1961 and brought direction and morale to the sprawling agency is a sterling example of his ability. For the first time, administrators of five agencies in the network met, worked out common problems and developed programs. New projects were conceived, including moderate-income housing, rent supplement assistance for low income families, open space preservation, urban beautification, mass transit assistance, rehabilitation assistance, relocation aids, grants for basic public facilities, [and] advanced acquisition of sites and land development assistance.”

In 1961 President Kennedy attempted to raise Weaver’s agency to cabinet level but was blocked by Congress because of his plans to put Weaver, a black man, at the head. Four years later President Johnson succeeded, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development was born. On January 13, 1966, Weaver became the first African American appointed to a cabinet position. As President Johnson made the appointment, he told the country, according to an Ebony account, that “Bob Weaver’s performance as administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Agency has been marked by the highest level of integrity and [an] ability to stimulate a genuine team spirit. I have found him to be a deep thinker but a quiet and articulate man of action. He is as well versed in the urban needs of America as any man I know.”

When the President Richard Nixon’s administration took over in 1968, Weaver left government for good, and returned to academe. He served as the President of Baruch College for two years and then became a Distinguished Professor at Hunter College until he retired in 1978. Even after his retirement, Weaver was famous for never wasting time and always working. Shortly after he joined the cabinet, in fact, an aide of his told Ebony that “Weaver never wastes time. He reads, writes, and constantly researches. When he makes a trip, he carries books and reports to read.”

In addition to both his academic and government work, Weaver has kept busy on many boards and committees. He was on the board of directors of Metro Life Insurance Company, the Bowery Savings Bank, and Mount Sinai Hospital and Medical School; he served as president of the National Committee against Discrimination in Housing, as a member of the commission on law and social action of the American Jewish Congress, the Citizens Committee for Children, the New York Civil Liberties Union, and for many years was active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Despite his success and the praise of others, Weaver has always refused to spread his own fame. “Bob believes in getting the work done, not publicity on what he plans to do,” Clarence Mitchell of the NAACP told Ebony magazine. Even when he was waiting to be nominated to the Cabinet, he refused to ask black groups to recommend him or campaign in his behalf, knowing that his qualifications would secure him the position.

While he may never have blown his own horn, many others recognized Weaver’s worth and awarded him honors accordingly. In addition to the nearly 30 honorary degrees from such institutions as the University of Michigan, Howard, Harvard, Morehouse, Rutgers, Amherst, and Columbia, he received the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP in 1962, the Russworm Award in 1963, delivered the annual Godkin Lectures at Harvard in 1965, and received the Albert Einstein Commemorative Award in 1968. In 1992 the Congressional Black Caucus honored him at a special party during their annual Weekend Production.

Robert C. Weaver

Encyclopedia of World Biography
COPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group Inc.

Robert C. Weaver

Robert C. Weaver (born 1907) was a housing expert who served as administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Agency and then became the first African American cabinet officer when President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1966.

Born into a middle-class family in 1907, Robert C. Weaver grew up in a nearly all-white Washington, D.C. neighborhood. The grandson of Robert Tanner Freeman, the first African American, Harvard-educated dentist, Weaver followed his grandfather's footsteps and enrolled at Harvard after graduation from Dunbar High School. At Harvard he majored in economics and graduated cum laude in 1929. Two years later he received a master's from Harvard. After teaching economics one year at the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina, Weaver returned to Harvard in 1932 on a scholarship and pursued a Ph.D. in economics conferred in 1934.

Deeply concerned that African Americans receive their fair share from the New Deal, Weaver joined Clark Foreman as an adviser on African American affairs for Harold Ickes' Department of the Interior. Under Weaver's prodding, the DOI's Public Works Administration (PWA) achieved a fine record for its treatment of African Americans. The Harvard economist particularly made sure that they received adequate consideration in PWA-sponsored public housing. Weaver remained in the federal government until 1944, serving in a number of advisory roles with the United States Housing Authority, the National Defense Advisory Commission, the Office of Production Management, the War Production Board, and the War Manpower Commission.

Just as important as these official positions was Weaver's leadership role in the informal Federal Council on Negro Affairs. Created in 1936, the council served as President Roosevelt's adviser on African American affairs, helped sensitize FDR to their needs and aspirations, and assured unprecedented commitments to African Americans.

Upon leaving the federal government in 1944, Weaver joined the Mayor's Committee on Race Relations in Chicago as its first executive secretary. While in Chicago he also served on the Metropolitan Housing Council. In 1946 he traveled to the former Soviet Union as a member of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration's mission to the Ukraine.

After his return, Weaver taught at Northwestern University, Columbia University Teachers College, New York University, and the New School for Social Research between 1947 and 1951. He also completed his two most important books after leaving government work: Negro Labor; A National Problem (1946) and The Negro Ghetto (1948). The latter was one of the first works to explore segregation in the North.

Besides his writing and teaching, Weaver assumed the directorship of the John Hay Whitney Foundation in 1949 and oversaw the distribution of fellowships to deserving African Americans for further study. He remained with the foundation until 1955, when Governor W. Averell Harriman of New York named him deputy state rent commissioner. Within a year Harriman promoted Weaver to state
rent administrator, the first cabinet level position ever held by an African American in New York state.

Weaver soon broke additional ground and became the highest federal administrator ever when John F. Kennedy nominated him administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Agency (HHFA) and overseer of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), Community Facilities Administration, Federal National Mortgage Association, Urban Renewal Administration, and Public Housing Administration. Kennedy's choice for the HHFA job proved controversial, primarily because he chaired the board of directors of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In addition, he strongly opposed segregated public housing, advocated the use of FHA mortgage insurance to integrate the suburbs, and insisted that the Urban Renewal Program stop uprooting so many poor African Americans. As a result, the nomination faced congressional delay and defiance, particularly from southerners. Nevertheless, Congress finally confirmed him and he took office February 11, 1961.

Unlike his predecessors, the new HHFA head wished to create a more rational urban complex rather than merely more housing production. He also believed that the independent agencies under HHFA needed more coordination and attempted to control better their personnel and budgets. Meanwhile, Weaver helped write the Housing Act of 1961, which he described as "a blend of the old and the new." Overall, it relied more on existing machinery rather than new programs. Among its features were provision for 100, 000 public housing units and a four-year authorization of $2.5 billion for reviving center cities.

Although Congress willingly agreed to pass the omnibus bill, its refusal to approve another bill directly affected Weaver's career. From the beginning of his administration, John F. Kennedy firmly believed that the nation needed a cabinet post on urban affairs. Only then, Kennedy believed, could order and direction be given to the many federal programs operating in metropolitan areas. Weaver, it appeared, would be the obvious choice to head the new cabinet post. But the prospect of having an African American cabinet officer seemed too much for Southern congressmen who felt little need for such a position anyway. As a result, they defeated all efforts by the president to create such a department.

Not until after Kennedy's assassination did urban America attain its own department, and then many expected that a white mayor would be selected to head it. After reviewing more than 200 applications, however, Johnson named Weaver as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in 1966. Weaver helped organize and manage the growing department for the next two years, leaving after Richard Nixon's victory over Hubert Humphrey in 1968. On retiring from federal service, the former HUD chief became the first president of Bernard M. Baruch College, a new component of the City University of New York system. He left Baruch in 1970 to become Distinguished Professor of Urban Affairs at Hunter College in New York City. For the next eight years he taught and directed the Urban Affairs Research Center. Weaver also maintained involvement in the civil rights movement and served on the boards of 13 prestigious companies. Later, Mayor Edward Koch of New York appointed the then 75-year-old Weaver as a member of a nine member board to supervise the city's rent-stabilized apartments in 1982.

Further Reading

A treatment of Weaver's early career can be found in Harvard Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National Issue (1978) and Richard Bardolph, The Negro Vanguard (1959). Mark I. Gelfand provides a good analysis of Weaver's career heading the HHFA in A Nation of Cities: The Federal Government and Urban America, 1933-1965 (1975). □

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Weaver, Robert C.

Weaver, Robert C. 1907–1997

Robert Clifton Weaver’s career as economist and presidential advisor spanned the New Deal to the War on Poverty. He produced two major treatises on the economic status of African Americans, Negro Labor (1946) and The Negro Ghetto (1948), and an influential textbook in urban planning and policy, The Urban Complex (1964). Weaver was the first U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the first African American to hold a cabinet-level position.

Born in Washington, D.C., on December 29, 1907, Weaver earned his doctorate in economics in 1934 from Harvard University. From 1933 through 1944, he held a sequence of advisory positions in the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, including Advisor on Negro Affairs to Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes (1934–1938) and chief, Negro Manpower Service, War Manpower Commission (1942–1944). From 1961 to 1966, under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, he was Administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Administration. President Johnson appointed Weaver the first secretary of HUD in 1966, a post he held until 1968.

Although most of his career was spent in government, Weaver was a consistent critic of government’s failure to end—and occasional duplicity in—the subjugation and segregation of the black population. In Negro Labor, Weaver detailed the participation of government agencies and trade unions in the exclusion of black workers from defense industry jobs. In The Negro Ghetto, Weaver explained how the Federal Housing Authority’s (FHA’s) lending practices reinforced local efforts to exclude African Americans from moving into white communities. Weaver argued that segregation would result in deteriorating housing quality and, eventually, to anger, the degradation of social relationships, and increased violence. In essence, he predicted the urban uprisings of the 1960s in 1948.

Walter B. Hill, in “Finding Place for the Negro: Robert C. Weaver and the Groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement” (2005), and Charles and Dona Hamilton, in “Social Policies, Civil Rights and Poverty” (1986), credit Weaver with the creation of a forerunner of modern affirmative action—the minimum percentage clause. This clause, which was inserted into Public Works Administration contracts for low-cost housing, prohibited discrimination on the basis of race or religion and identified, as prima facie evidence of discrimination, a contractor’s failure to hire a minimum percentage of black workers, based on the number of skilled black craftsmen in the locality.

Weaver outlined his vision of how to revitalize these urban centers in The Urban Complex and in Dilemmas of Urban America (1965). Weaver sought to revitalize urban centers through comprehensive, regional planning. Despite the black community’s perception that urban renewal meant “Negro removal,” Weaver remained an advocate of the use of eminent domain, government subsidies, and tax incentives to replace deteriorating, low-cost housing in urban centers. Weaver believed urban renewal projects created the opportunity to replace segregated ghettos with integrated communities. Later, in a 1985 article, “The First Twenty Years of HUD,” Weaver acknowledged the difficulty of realizing this vision.

Following his tenure at HUD, Weaver served as president of Baruch College, City University of New York, and as a Distinguished Professor of Urban Affairs at Hunter College. He died in July 17, 1997, at the age of eighty-nine. In 1999, Congress renamed the HUD headquarters in his honor.

Weaver, Robert Clifton

The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.

Copyright The Columbia University Press

Robert Clifton Weaver, 1907–, U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (1966–68), b. Washington, D.C. He was successively adviser to the Secretary of the Interior (1933–37), special assistant with the Housing Authority (1937–40), and an administrative assistant with the National Defense Advisory Commission (1940). During World War II he held several offices concerned with mobilizing black labor. After holding various teaching assignments and working with the John Hay Whitney Foundation, Weaver was (1955–59) New York state rent commissioner. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed him to the post of administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Agency. In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him head of the newly created Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD); he was the first black to hold a cabinet post. After leaving HUD he was (1969–70) president of Bernard M. Baruch College and professor of Urban Affairs at Hunter College (1970–78). His works include Negro Labor: A National Problem (1946), The Negro Ghetto (1948), The Urban Complex: Human Values in Urban Life (1964), and Dilemmas of Urban America (1965).

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